Q I am flying to deepest Finland from Heathrow, with a five-and-a-half-hour stopover in Helsinki. Is this enough time for sightseeing or am I doomed to wander the corridors and gift shops waiting for the hours to tick by?

I'm always interested in where others are going – but you've missed out the whole of Brazil here. This is the country to go to in 2013: 5,000 miles of undiscovered sandy beaches with as much or as little action as you want, plus history, culture, samba, football and beautiful hidden pousadas to stay at wherever you go.

Despite the UK economy recently coming out of a double-dip recession, the graduate job market is still lagging behind its heyday of the mid-noughties. With 52 applications on average for every graduate vacancy, teaching English abroad is fast becoming a serious option for many university leavers. In fact, a recent poll by Populus for the British Council found that over half of under-25s believed they would have a better job if they lived or studied abroad.

ASCAL famously wrote that all of man's troubles come from his inability to sit quietly in his room, and I always think of this aphorism when travelling. Why on earth did I bestir myself from my peaceful study in order to submit myself to the indignities of the security check at Heathrow Airport? Why does travel always seem to involve getting up so early in the morning? Why do trains, planes and automobiles create such a fiery rage in my breast?

Once, Britain was a country of elm trees. Then Dutch elm disease arrived, in the late 1960s, and within three decades nearly all of them were wiped out. Now, a similar fate threatens another glory of the British woodland: the ash.